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EKOCENTER™: How It Works

At the 2013 Clinton Global Initiative, The Coca-Cola Company and partners announced that we will deliver EKOCENTERs to communities in need across 20 countries by 2015. The EKOCENTER project aims to improve the holistic well-being of developing communities around the world, focusing on those within the Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP), the largest, poorest socio-economic group. Globally, this represents nearly 4 billion people who live on less than US$2 per day.

EKOCENTER is an off-the-grid, modularly designed kiosk, which has been transformed from a 20-foot shipping container into an open-air hub of community activity, to provide safe drinking water, wireless communication, power and other functionality to jump-start entrepreneurship opportunities and community development in communities in need.

Each EKOCENTER will come with a Slingshot™ water purification unit, power source and commercial space. Once optimally developed, a fully equipped EKOCENTER could serve as a retail outlet that provides a wide variety of utility, services and/or commercial products tailored to a community’s needs.

While EKOCENTER’s core mission is physical well-being, focused on providing safe drinking water, it also can improve social/emotional well-being through connectivity; community well-being as a safe place for congregation; financial/economic well-being by offering jobs, skills and services; and environmental well-being by helping incentivize recycling in a community.

Through EKOCENTER, 100 million liters of clean, safe drinking water, along with mobile and Internet access, will reach 45,000 people in some of the most remote places of the world. In addition, the project will create 300 direct jobs, mostly for women entrepreneurs, as well as 750 indirect jobs, and 150 recycling or waste management programs.

EKOCENTER supports our Company’s commitment to replenish the water used in our beverages and their production, our 5by20 program to empower 5 million women entrepreneurs across our value chain by 2020, as well as the Company‘s continued commitment to foster sustainable communities globally.

At The Coca-Cola Company, we aim to share the collective power and know-how of the system with the people who need it most. We strive to help create opportunities in local communities – helping individuals to build their skill sets and knowledge base with the hope that they may succeed. The success of each healthy and happy individual is success that can have a ripple effect. And that is a very good thing.

Our hope is that EKOCENTER, equipped with Slingshot™ units, will have a positive effect on local communities – those most in need of access to safe drinking water. By improving access to clean water through the EKOCENTERS, we hope to divert time spent fetching of finding clean water into education, employment and overall individual empowerment.

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